Protecting personal computers from a never-ending onslaught of pestware or malware has become increasingly important and challenging. Some types of pestware or malware can compromise a user's privacy by sending sensitive information about the user or the user's computer to a remote destination without the user's knowledge or permission. Such malware is commonly referred to as “spyware.” One particular type of spyware, a “keylogger,” secretly records a user's keystrokes as the user types on a keyboard and captures the resulting text in a data file, which is often encrypted. The keylogger may also secretly send the captured data file to a remote destination by e-mail or some other communication protocol. Such a keylogger can be used by a remote party to acquire information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and other sensitive information.
Clearly, computer users have a strong motivation to detect and remove unwanted keyloggers from their systems. Many computer users rely on anti-spyware programs to detect and remove such threats. Since keyloggers are usually designed to be difficult to detect, however, conventional anti-spyware programs may fail to detect them quickly and effectively. It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved method and system for detecting a keylogger on a computer.